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Hi, how are you doing? Justin here, filling in for the

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theory godfather today.

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and in this lesson I want to discuss

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minor scales.

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There's been a lot of confusion on the forums

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and I've seen lots of comments of different videos that I've done

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with people getting a bit confused about the different types of minor scale.

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The major scale is pretty obvious. There's the major scale and that's it.

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When we start talking about minor scales, we discover that there's the Natual minor scale, the Pure minor scale, the Aeolian mode...

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...the Harmonic minor, Melodic minor, the Phrygian mode, the Dorian mode...

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So how come there's al these different minor scales? Where do they come from and when do you use them?

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That's what this video is about.

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I'm gonna tell you a little story and it's not really the truth, but I'm hoping that it will help you understand

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the makeup of these different minor scales and when you might use them.

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The first thing that you need to understand is the pure minor scale, which is the same as the natural minor scale and the Aeolian mode.

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This is the first minor scale that was used way back in ... time

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And it sounds like this. I'm gonna do one of these examples in the key of A.

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I'm gonna play an A minor chord and then I'm gonna play the A pure minor scale, which is the same as C major scale.

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It has the same notes as C major. [br]So here's the chord...

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...and here's the scale...

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That's the first type of minor scale that existed and that's the one that was used for a long time.

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Before we get on to the next stage, you need to understand another thing called a 'cadence',

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or more specifically a 'perfect cadence'. A perfect cadence is a V chord going to the I chord in any given key.

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In a major key, if we translate this back to A major, it would be the chord E7 going to A.

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In most classical music this was how a song finished, or a section finished.

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And you can hear when I play it in a sec. it really sounds like it's resolved, it finishes.

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So here we go, E7 to an A.

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You hear it all the time.

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Really common, it's this sound...

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You can hear it sound kind of final, finished.

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A perfect cadence.

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The reason that that works is, particularly this note G#, which is part of the E7 chord going...

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G# is called the leading note. And that's a really important part to understand.

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I already mentioned that the A minor scale has the same notes as the C major scale.

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If we look at the chords in the key of C, but we start on the chord A, we end up with this diatonic sequence, which would be A minor...

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B half-diminished... C ... D minor ... E minor (and this is important!), the fifth chord.

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F major... G major... and back to A minor.

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That's the diatonic sequence in A Pure minor. A natural minor, pure minor, aeolian mode, there all the same thing.

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They all have the same notes as the C major scale.[br]They're called relative major and relative minor.

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The relative major of A minor is C major, and the relative minor of C major is A minor.

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You might want to check out the web site page for this. All of the stuff I'm talking about is typed up already,

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the page is called 'Demystify the minors', it would be a really good idea to take a look at that page.

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This video is embedded in that page on the website, so you can scroll down and see all the notes.

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You'll probably find that helpful to be able to see these things, the construction of each of these chords.

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The idea of this video is to give you the aural content, to make sure your ears understand what I'm talking about.

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So that's a cadence.

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The fifth chord in that diatonic sequence of A pure minor was E minor.

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If we go E minor to A minor, it doesn't really sound finished. It could keep going somewhere.

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It could go all sorts of different places, it doesn't have any sort of finality.

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What happened back in the day (it's not exactly true but bear with me), that Bach really wanted to get his perfect cadence.

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He wanted the sound of E7 going to A minor.

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So he could finish his song.

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What he decided to do, was to change the note G, which is the note that makes the E minor, and change it to a G sharp.

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Which meant that that chord, the fifth chord in the key of A minor, could be E7.

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So he could have the E7 going to A minor.

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That new scale is called the A Harmonic minor, because it gave him the harmony he required to make the music he wanted to play.

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This scale sounds like this. This is the A harmonic minor scale. Here's the chord...

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...Here's the scale...

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All well and good! He's got his E7, he's changed the scale, and now he had the harmonies going that he wanted to use.

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Everything is happy. Almost...